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Director's Note
Gregory Mosher
April 20, 2008
Four years ago, President Lee C. Bollinger launched the Arts Initiative with a simple query. Could the arts become a part of each Columbia student's life? No university had ever tried to answer this question - though others have now joined the fray - so our first task was to discover what an Arts Initiative is and does. Conversations with hundreds of students and faculty quickly taught us that we serve them best by echoing the University's mission, exposing students to diverse work of the highest standards and encouraging them to consider --and experience--it as fully and critically as possible.
One important strand of our work has been to invite remarkable artists to our campus for extended residencies. Peter Brook's legendary company performed Tierno Bokar for nearly a month in a 500-seat improvised theatre, prompting an extended discussion of religious tolerance. Czech President and playwright Václav Havel's seven weeks at Columbia were the focus of twenty-five events exploring the connection between arts and citizenship, with participants ranging from Nobelist Orhan Pamuk to President Bill Clinton. And this past year, our suggestion that Columbia establish the position of University Artist (echoing the University Scholar) came to fruition when Dr. Oliver Sacks joined the Columbia community as the first to hold that title.
Another focus is to assemble and disseminate useful information. Strange as it might seem to the Class of 2011, there was until recently no Columbia website about the arts: no compendia of university arts organizations, programs and venues, no list of jobs and internships, no inventory of campus rehearsal or performance spaces, and no directory of Columbians who achieved great things in the arts. These and many other databases now live on the university's arts website—CUArts--where they are viewed by nearly 500,000 visitors each year.
We've also encouraged students' direct experience in the arts, supporting the historian who plays bassoon in the Columbia Orchestra, the economist who acts in the Pinter play, and the engineer who makes experimental films. The Gatsby Charitable Foundation continues to underwrite this effort with enthusiasm and extraordinary generosity.
To link the campus to the culture, we've found ever more ways to provide free admission to New York's great museums and galleries, as well as free or inexpensive theatre and concert tickets.
Over the last fourteen months we developed and launched four new major university-wide ventures. The Ticket and Information Center has disbursed over 30,000 free or discounted tickets to campus and NYC events in its first few months of operation. The Columbia Alumni Arts League's programs extend Columbia students' involvement in the arts past graduation by providing alumni members with special benefits at more than fifty-five NYC cultural organizations and by hosting frequent arts programs. Our China project adds the artist's perspective to the new university imperative that President Bollinger often refers to as “global literacy.” And finally, we've been working with Core and other faculty to make class excursions into NYC culture easier and more effective, as we see no reason why this city's major cultural institutions shouldn't be a direct and vital part of the Columbia educational experience. These programs, discussed below in more detail, are our most ambitious yet. We hope they will serve the university for years to come.
In the arts, there are things you can measure, like museum attendance. And there are things you can't, like Jackson Pollock's drips exploding through your eyeballs. The latter is clearly more important, and so even though I know, for instance, that culture is a multi-billion dollar economic engine I have always been leery of justifying the arts on utilitarian grounds. After all, artistic expression - the drawings children do, the buildings we live in, the music we hum every day – is just part of living, like the air we breathe. But I've grown likewise leery, perhaps because I've offered them so often, of ringing defenses of Art for Art's sake. So consider a middle course. Somewhere between the hard numbers and the ineffable ache you feel on the left side of your chest, there's something to be said for developing a sense of confidence about the arts. When you've critically engaged the great, the near-great and the also-rans, some pretty wonderful things begin to happen. You look past Hollywood nonsense to relish a film as complex as a Faulkner novel. You find a remarkable insight or a great performance in a new play even when the critic missed it. You take a second, more rewarding look at the confusing painting, and you speak up when the architect offers a banal design for your new corporate headquarters. We dream that Columbians will buy art that delights them, collaborate with young architects, and shape their communities by serving on cultural boards. We aim to build inquisitive and brave participants in the richest, most mysterious expressions of our common life.
There are, no doubt, many ways to do this, and we will, no doubt, find more of them in the years ahead. But as we report on this fourth year, we note more than our growth from a borrowed office and a laptop to a venture that now reaches across the campus and around the world. We're starting to believe that the answer to President Bollinger's question might just be yes.
On behalf of the entire staff at the Arts Initiative, I extend thanks to the countless students and faculty who guide us, and the many colleagues, especially in the President's office, who make our work possible. I take great pleasure in once again thanking Provost Alan Brinkley, on whose advice and support we so often rely, and of course Lee Bollinger, who constantly supports this ground-breaking project with his extraordinary intelligence, patience, generosity and trust.
Gregory Mosher
April 20, 2008
Four years ago, President Lee C. Bollinger launched the Arts Initiative with a simple query. Could the arts become a part of each Columbia student's life? No university had ever tried to answer this question - though others have now joined the fray - so our first task was to discover what an Arts Initiative is and does. Conversations with hundreds of students and faculty quickly taught us that we serve them best by echoing the University's mission, exposing students to diverse work of the highest standards and encouraging them to consider --and experience--it as fully and critically as possible.
One important strand of our work has been to invite remarkable artists to our campus for extended residencies. Peter Brook's legendary company performed Tierno Bokar for nearly a month in a 500-seat improvised theatre, prompting an extended discussion of religious tolerance. Czech President and playwright Václav Havel's seven weeks at Columbia were the focus of twenty-five events exploring the connection between arts and citizenship, with participants ranging from Nobelist Orhan Pamuk to President Bill Clinton. And this past year, our suggestion that Columbia establish the position of University Artist (echoing the University Scholar) came to fruition when Dr. Oliver Sacks joined the Columbia community as the first to hold that title.
Another focus is to assemble and disseminate useful information. Strange as it might seem to the Class of 2011, there was until recently no Columbia website about the arts: no compendia of university arts organizations, programs and venues, no list of jobs and internships, no inventory of campus rehearsal or performance spaces, and no directory of Columbians who achieved great things in the arts. These and many other databases now live on the university's arts website—CUArts--where they are viewed by nearly 500,000 visitors each year.
We've also encouraged students' direct experience in the arts, supporting the historian who plays bassoon in the Columbia Orchestra, the economist who acts in the Pinter play, and the engineer who makes experimental films. The Gatsby Charitable Foundation continues to underwrite this effort with enthusiasm and extraordinary generosity.
To link the campus to the culture, we've found ever more ways to provide free admission to New York's great museums and galleries, as well as free or inexpensive theatre and concert tickets.
Over the last fourteen months we developed and launched four new major university-wide ventures. The Ticket and Information Center has disbursed over 30,000 free or discounted tickets to campus and NYC events in its first few months of operation. The Columbia Alumni Arts League's programs extend Columbia students' involvement in the arts past graduation by providing alumni members with special benefits at more than fifty-five NYC cultural organizations and by hosting frequent arts programs. Our China project adds the artist's perspective to the new university imperative that President Bollinger often refers to as “global literacy.” And finally, we've been working with Core and other faculty to make class excursions into NYC culture easier and more effective, as we see no reason why this city's major cultural institutions shouldn't be a direct and vital part of the Columbia educational experience. These programs, discussed below in more detail, are our most ambitious yet. We hope they will serve the university for years to come.
In the arts, there are things you can measure, like museum attendance. And there are things you can't, like Jackson Pollock's drips exploding through your eyeballs. The latter is clearly more important, and so even though I know, for instance, that culture is a multi-billion dollar economic engine I have always been leery of justifying the arts on utilitarian grounds. After all, artistic expression - the drawings children do, the buildings we live in, the music we hum every day – is just part of living, like the air we breathe. But I've grown likewise leery, perhaps because I've offered them so often, of ringing defenses of Art for Art's sake. So consider a middle course. Somewhere between the hard numbers and the ineffable ache you feel on the left side of your chest, there's something to be said for developing a sense of confidence about the arts. When you've critically engaged the great, the near-great and the also-rans, some pretty wonderful things begin to happen. You look past Hollywood nonsense to relish a film as complex as a Faulkner novel. You find a remarkable insight or a great performance in a new play even when the critic missed it. You take a second, more rewarding look at the confusing painting, and you speak up when the architect offers a banal design for your new corporate headquarters. We dream that Columbians will buy art that delights them, collaborate with young architects, and shape their communities by serving on cultural boards. We aim to build inquisitive and brave participants in the richest, most mysterious expressions of our common life.
There are, no doubt, many ways to do this, and we will, no doubt, find more of them in the years ahead. But as we report on this fourth year, we note more than our growth from a borrowed office and a laptop to a venture that now reaches across the campus and around the world. We're starting to believe that the answer to President Bollinger's question might just be yes.
On behalf of the entire staff at the Arts Initiative, I extend thanks to the countless students and faculty who guide us, and the many colleagues, especially in the President's office, who make our work possible. I take great pleasure in once again thanking Provost Alan Brinkley, on whose advice and support we so often rely, and of course Lee Bollinger, who constantly supports this ground-breaking project with his extraordinary intelligence, patience, generosity and trust.
| Projects |
| The Ticket and Information Center opened in January 2008 and dispensed over 30,000 free and discounted tickets to the Columbia community in its first fourteen weeks. Operating both in the Lerner lobby and online, the TIC features campus events of all sorts, NYC cultural events, and discount movie vouchers. By special arrangement with Telecharge and select Broadway producers, the TIC has at last created an alternative to student rush by selling student-priced tickets in advance. The Ticket and Information Center staff fields questions ranging from Carnegie Hall's address to when the Columbia Orchestra holds auditions. TIC operates in partnership with the Provost's office, with additional support from Columbia College and Student Services. |
| The Columbia Alumni Arts League was established in late 2006 to make it possible for Columbians from all schools to stay involved in the arts – and with each other - after graduation. The Columbia Alumni Arts League provides member discounts and perks at fifty-five leading NYC cultural organizations, while CAAL Nights bring alumni together several times a month at a dazzling variety of arts events. Last year President Bollinger and Jean Magnano Bollinger began a tradition of presenting the graduating class with complimentary one-year memberships; the 2007 graduates joined nearly one thousand members from previous classes. CAAL also maintains a web listing of local arts events featuring alumni, and sends a weekly newsletter featuring exclusive and affordable cultural opportunities to over 10,000 members. |
| In Spring '07, we established a cultural venture to support President Bollinger's effort to create global literacy at the University. Our program has begun with China, where we're working with arts institutions, schools and individual artists in film, theatre, dance, music, fine arts and architecture. This venture will of course link Chinese artists, students and faculty with their Columbia counterparts. But we aim to do more. Every Columbia student will increasingly deal, directly or indirectly, with people from different countries and cultures. Artists, whose job it is to illuminate both the surface and the subconscious of a culture, help us towards a fuller, more nuanced understanding of each other. To know the statistics on rural migration to China's cities is certainly important; to experience the great Jia Zhang-ke's film about a young woman trying to survive in her adopted Beijing is to recognize the individuals those statistics represent. As our students engage the great social, legal, and scientific challenges of the coming decades, we look forward to adding the revelatory power of the artist. |
| CUArts, the University's web compendium of campus and NYC arts information and resources, is now accessible directly from the Columbia University homepage. Sixty thousand visitors a month visit the site to link to Columbia's major arts schools, programs, organizations and venues, the Ticket and Information Center, and the Columbia Alumni Arts League, as well as listings of jobs/internships, arts libraries, campus rehearsal and performance venues, and much more. |
| The Gatsby Charitable Foundation fund, made possible by the generosity of Lord David (MBA '71) and Lady Susie Sainsbury, continues its extraordinary support for student arts projects. Grantees spanned Columbia's schools, with projects ranging from Project Bluelight, Columbia's first undergraduate film production company, to Follies, an original musical composed and performed by graduate students in the School of International and Public Affairs. Gatsby funds also support the CUArts website and subsidize student tickets. The Gatsby application form is now online at CUArts. |
| At the first annual Metropolitan Museum Orientation Party, nearly 1600 incoming students from Columbia College, Fu Foundations School of Engineering and Applied Science , Barnard and the School of General Studies were welcomed to Columbia with exclusive access to the Egyptian, African and Greek and Roman galleries for a reception and viewing. The Arts Initiative, Provost's office and New Student Orientation Program hosted, and we hope to make the private Met reception an annual event. |
| This year we significantly increased outreach efforts to schools beyond Columbia College, SEAS and General Studies, focusing on student councils and other associations, and hosting regular Friday lunches for students and student groups. We also participated in Orientation events at the Union Theological Seminary, the Schools of Business, Journalism, and Law, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The Arts Initiative's weekly newsletter, highlighting free or discounted tickets for the entire Columbia community, now reaches over 8,000 people, and our new Facebook page connects over 850 members. Sign up on the website! |
| Project 2009 is our working title for a project to make class excursions to NY cultural events easy and affordable. Working closely with faculty, and building on the TIC's ability to distribute tickets to individual students, we're assembling a program to extend the classroom directly into the city's finest arts organizations and venues. The goal is simple: we want to make it as easy to enroll in NYC's culture as it is to enroll in Columbia's courses. We'll be testing during the 2008-09 school year in preparation for a launch in Fall 2009. |
| With Center for Career Education, we now co-sponsor a new paid internship program, the Columbia Arts Experience, which recently placed 14 students with arts organizations including Carnegie Hall, Harlem Stage, New York City Ballet and the Sundance Channel. |
| Passport to New York, which the Arts Initiative administers with the Provost's office, continues to provide free admission to twenty-nine major NY museums, including the Metropolitan, MoMA, the Whitney and the Guggenheim. Passport remains one of our most popular programs, and has been integrated into numerous Columbia classes. |
